By Kenton C. Anderson
Kenton C. Anderson, Choosing to Preach. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. Hardcover, 287 pages.
Choosing to Preach is a call to preach biblical sermons and, at the same time, to recognize that there are many ways to carry out that mandate.
In the face of what he sees as an increasingly challenging environment for preaching, Kent Anderson encourages expository preaching — with a small “e” — rather than “Expository” preaching, which “not only implies faithfulness to the biblical text but also requires certain formal elements” such as “a linear series of points (often three) from a limited number of verses, regardless of the genre or form of the text itself.”
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By contrast, “small e” expository preaching is simply preaching “which seeks to replicate the message, form, and impact of the biblical text exactly as they were originally intended.” Such sermons seek to help people hear from God by exposing them to the Word of God “as faithfully and powerfully as possible.”
Such exposition, says Anderson, can take many different forms, and it is that assertion to which he devotes the bulk of his volume as he demonstrates a variety of the ways in which exposition of God’s Word can take place.
Initially Anderson deals with the issue of how the preacher approaches the biblical text, suggesting two primary options: deduction “begins with the Bible and moves toward the listener” while induction “begins with the listener and moves toward the Bible.”
The deductive preacher is a “listener” who “sits alone in the study, spending long hours examining texts and listening closely. God is speaking and the preacher needs to hear him right. Eventually, the preacher discerns the message and stands nup boldly to sound the alarm.” Anderson believes that “The deductive preacher starts with the Bible, making interpretation the first order of business. Having heard from God, there is nothing left but to submit. The beauty of deductive study is in its submissive nature. Deduction is a posture as much as it is a method. It is a bowed head and bended knee.”
Equally valid, Anderson argues, is the inductive approach that starts with the perspective of the listener and appeals to the “doers” — those who may prefer “active experimentation over reflection and observation.” (The one who starts playing with the new camera rather than first studying the user manual.) He says that, “Listeners have a lot on their minds when they drag themselves to church. Rather than asking them to abandon the insistence of their issues and needs, the inductive preacher takes those concerns as the starting place of the sermon, leading the listeners to the point where submission is understood not only as the imperative response of a human being before God but also as the necessary key to solving the problems that they have.”